The papacy was a minor player in the sixteenth-century print world, and Publishing for the popes faces an overwhelming historiography of Reformers’ successes at the printing press and Roman Catholic censorship policies. For this reason, Sachet's book is all the more welcome as he demonstrates an active programme of patronage and publication at the heart of the Roman Curia, stewarded by Cardinal Marcello Cervini, later Pope Marcellus ii. In the prelude, Sachet sets the scene for the development of papal printing enterprises by examining external stimuli and precedents for official print in Rome. From the third chapter onwards, Cervini is the chief protagonist and the main link between the papal hierarchy and printers. ‘Portrait of a Cardinale Editore’ considers Cervini's career, cultural interests, scholarly priorities and integration into the book world. Cervini's Greek and Latin presses in Rome are considered in chapters iv and v, covering the years from 1539 to 1544. In turn, Sachet establishes the key individuals in each enterprise and their printed outputs, meanwhile placing works in their historical setting and outlining the distribution of copies. The difficulties that Cervini's presses encountered created an ‘appalling financial dynamic’ (p. 83). Cervini's ‘focus on the Italian peninsula, the Papal States and specifically religious orders’ (p. 87) displayed a thoroughly uneconomical approach to the book trade: ultimately ‘the press was destined to fall apart’ (p. 79). These chapters present a critically flawed financial venture, but the understanding is that this was not a typical commercial enterprise. Instead, it was proto-papal institutional patronage encouraged to enrich Roman Catholic scholarship and religion. As such, the Cervini presses utilised new fonts, produced elegant folios and provided an extravagant number of presentation copies. The Greek press ultimately contributed only three publications, and while the Latin press, managed by Francesco Priscianese, was more successful, it also proved unsustainable. Thereafter, in chapter vi, Sachet turns his attention to Cervini's editorial activity after 1544. He postulates that the ‘number of books which saw the light of day entirely or largely because of Cervini can be increased to over 90’ (p. 134), highlighting how Cervini worked via proxy with Europe's printers. The cardinal's engagement with some of these projects is more evident than others, and each listed in appendix B requires individual case-by-case scrutiny before being readily accepted as a Cervini project. What is clear, however, is that Cervini was a tireless bibliophile with extensive, multifaceted networks throughout Europe and beyond. In chapters vii and viii, the epilogue and conclusion reveal some continuities in Roman Catholic printing strategy and a policy of targeting a specific readership of clergy ‘with the purpose of achieving internal conformity and discipline’ (p. 210) through the Church Fathers, official works and ecclesiastical histories. This book establishes Cervini at the centre of this process and is a valuable addition to the history of sixteenth-century printing. Sachet establishes an understated yet credible approach to printing from the Roman Curia in a field dominated now, as it was then, by the Reformers.